The piece is about the creation/production of signification. About the moment just before. About what lies between desire and expression, the in-between of wordless communication, the content that precedes the action. How are things before reality touches them? How can spaces that have never been visited still inhabit us? These images of places that have never been walked, seen, touched, how can we express them through language? What is the place of words in these descriptions and how can we escape from them?
I mixed, destroyed, superimposed, cut, fragmented, reduced, and tried to give an existence to imaginary spaces through materiality. A specific table was created to give form to these mental/affective spaces. Sentences, words were carved in little pieces of wood, embroidered on transparent organza, typed with an old and sonorous typewriter, audio recorded, and then hidden inside the table. The oral descriptions run through a collection of dissimilar drawers. The sound of various atmospheres, entangled with intimate descriptions of imaginary spaces moves through the table, comes and goes, and disappears… constructing and deconstructing places in a same shifting mixture.
Sounds from the listening table (random excerpt, 00:40)
Russian birch plywood, thread, silk organza and other fabrics, typewriters, wood pieces, ribbon (several inks), paper, speakers, sound card, max/msp, amplifier, 39 m2. Very warm thank you to all who, anonymously, participated in this collection of imaginary spaces. Photo: Julie Faubert.